John F. La Barbera ’60 Has Mastered the Art of Prudent Risk-Taking

Growing up in Union City in the 1950s, John F. La Barbera ’60 had little exposure to the career possibilities that might await him after college. Fortunately, he selected engineering, a discipline well suited to his innate propensity for exploration and problem solving.

He compared various engineering programs and determined that Stevens not only had the best program, but was within commuting distance from home. "I am greatly indebted to my parents, a stay-at-home mom and Port Authority police officer, for finding a way to finance my education. They could not, however, afford the on-campus living. So, Stevens' proximity to home was fortuitous."

Even at an early age, La Barbera prioritized improving his mind. But the transition from high school to Stevens proved challenging. "I was the best physics student at my high school," he recalls. "But my new classmates were better prepared in algebra and calculus. I had to work diligently to catch up with them." Exerting extra effort to achieve a goal became a pattern which has guided him through all his successes.

La Barbera graduated from Stevens with a Bachelor of Engineering degree. His first career role involved working on the inertial guidance system for the Atlas, the U.S. Air Force's first operational intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). He was soon promoted to full engineer and continued working on the Atlas program at the Pacific Missile Range at California's Vandenberg Space Force Base.

"The Atlas program was an interim program, to provide protection against Russia," he explains. "It was a liquid fuel rocket that was developed before solid core rockets were available."

Although being a rocket scientist was exciting, La Barbera had his eye on management. He enrolled in what was then the Graduate School of Management at UCLA to expand his knowledge about business. He earned an MBA and completed the study requirements for a Ph.D. He also taught one semester of second year physics classes at Santa Monica City College followed by a year teaching operations management to graduate students at UCLA.

He began his post-graduate business career as an executive advisor for the management planning department at McDonell Douglas' Missiles & Space Systems Division.

As he pursued more management experience and responsibility, La Barbera moved through roles at airplane manufacturer North American Rockwell, Image Systems, which produced a microfiche-based information storage and retrieval system, and Paramount Equipment, Inc. where he served as executive vice president and general manager.

La Barbera was amassing vast business knowledge, and he wanted to start using it in new ways. He founded Corporate Planning and Finance, later renamed The Corporate Group, to provide management consulting services to small businesses – those with revenue in the $25 million range. Over the course of about 10 years, the firm worked with more than 300 clients. "I loved using my business expertise to identify and help solve their problems," he says.

As much as he enjoyed the work, however, he wanted to get involved in something that was more suited for scaling on a national level. He developed specifications for what he envisioned as an ideal business. He found his answer in the nascent custom storage solution industry and founded the Closet Factory in 1983.

"I planned Closet Factory with the concept of franchising in mind," he says, noting that there are currently over 50 Closet Factory locations across the country and in Canada. "We provide management consulting and guidance to each Closet Factory business owner to support their success."

That includes providing franchisees with a detailed business platform including concise, and highly valuable, training manuals covering the fundamentals of sales, management and the responsibilities of business ownership. He shares with them all he has learned over the years about taking prudent risks to move their careers, and lives, forward.

La Barbera appreciates the education he received at Stevens, and the sacrifices his parents made to help him achieve it. He is in the process of establishing a scholarship endowment to support commuter students pursuing degrees in engineering – students who, like his younger self, do not have the resources to live on campus.

He also thinks of the families who, like his parents, bear the financial burden of sending their children to college. "I'm not big on the notion of legacy," he says. "But I am enthusiastic about helping future students earn their engineering degrees from Stevens. My hope is they will use their education to help society and use their success to give back to the Stevens community."